Friday Caps Clips: A Couple More Award Nominations

and yet for how much the Habs are getting “outplayed” the series is tied at 2. Now if only the Habs could do to the Pens what the Red Wings did to the Sharks last night, and have the Habs do it twice to finish off the series.

I watched games 2 and 3 and in no way was MTL out-played.

Plenty of previous quotes about how they can’t keep winning if they keep getting outplayed.

Because I know how that story ended. Don’t get me wrong, i’m pleased as punch its (potentially) happening to the Pens, but its still dredging up bad memories.

I honestly don’t know if they did or not because I stopped reading immediately after this line:

Or his benching of Tomas Fleischmann, a 20-goal scorer in the regular season, for a hapless Scott Walker in Game 7?

That thing was fuckin’ pathetic. It was almost worse than Nashville’s.

we miss you, too!

Keep it in between the ditches, Gouldie!

Get home safe.

I think Ted’s got all faith in what we have… and just understands that we just need experience. That’s all… I think everyone overestimated that experience.

Bring back Fedorov! :)

Agreed. I thought there was a bit of bus-throwing, though it might not have been intentional – almost subconscious, like he spilled it all out without realizing what all of his venting was pointing to.

I guess it comes down to philosophy on a coach’s role, to an extent. Things like “They played a defensive scheme that was very frustrating. They used their match ups deftly. They were more patient than us” and “I believe our hockey IQ seemed low this series and we didn’t adjust well on the ice to the new schemes coming our way” reflect on Bruce – either the strategy/adaptations were wrong or nonexistant or the players were unable to execute the brilliant plans (which can fall back on the coach’s inability to properly prepare his team or make personnel decisions).

Somewhat related, I looked at the Unofficial Salary Cap Info and noticed that Ben Clymer won’t need to be listed next season. Hooray!

Great take. I completely agree with the second half. I’m not as sour on GMGM for the deadline deals because he made moves to help the team. It’s not his fault the players failed. You could say “he should have gotten a different D” but the reality is he made the team better and deeper. What else can you ask for at the deadline? He didn’t take anything of much value from our future and he gave BB all the tools to make a long playoff run. I wonder how everyone feels about our deadline acquisitions of Scotty Walker plays more than 1 playoff game. That’s not on GMGM.

And, definitely, the next two off-seasons are going to be the real test.

I had almost forgotten that Rachel Nichols used to be the Caps beat writer.

I don’t. The guy wore a groove into the ice down to the concrete with his “charge down the right wing, circle around the faceoff dot, and launch the puck into the logo on the goalie’s chest” move.

And folks think Ovechkin has become predicable.

I don’t see how thats possible unless you move Semin to LW or promote Semin to the 1st line. I’d love to Fehr get 15 to 17 TOI.

First, I think it’s much easier for the league to say a goal shouldn’t count, than to say one should have.

And, second, it’s very easy to admit that a goal shouldn’t have counted when it really didn’t impact the game’s outcome.

It’s hard for me to see the NHL admitting that a goal shouldn’t have counted when that goal either was the GWG or a massive momentum changer.

nope, they are too busy talking with gary bettman about who he wants to win that nights game. and i think if crosby is weakening his sticks, its to make sure it breaks into pieces when he slams it against the other teams goal post.

i do think the seemingly automatic slash call when someones stick breaks needs to be changed. these sticks break when a guy takes a wrist shot. no reason to expect that contact between sticks should result in a slash call.

No I don’t. I don’t believe it’s a one-to-one causation.

But I do think that making an accusation or slinging mud gets the idea out there. Robert L. helps make noise in the media. He perhaps gets people talking about it. He might get the attention of the team. In our case I recall reading that the Habs organization brought up crease interference with Halak’s skates up with the league officials after that game 2. Maybe Robert L. and the team noticed and fussed about it concurrently. Or maybe the blog and tweets about it got the attention of the team and media so that it was discussed even further.

I never underestimate the power of information/mud-slinging through the media in all of its forms or in other words to change the focus of the debate. It’s a time-old strategy—don’t debate the substance, change the topic, redirect the discussion.

In this case what I found interesting was the pattern—Robert L. made an accusation about why the Caps won game 2. I do think it ultimately could have had an effect on how strictly the crease was called by the refs in subsequent games in our series. But I don’t absolve the Caps of responsibility for getting themselves into that position where calling the game strictly could result in a game changing moment for them.

Now Robert L. makes, in a much more suggestive way but with video, the inference that Crosby is cheating a bit to get his frequent slashing calls. I’ll just watch to see how much chatter results from his blog chatter.

Check your email in a minute bro

I think what makes Bruce so likeable is that he’s the everyman who wears his heart on his sleeve. I’m more in the camp that wants the head coach to be unmoved behind the bench when stuff happens so seeing him turn red and bang the glass when a goal is scored isn’t for me, but I do enjoy watching him jump up and down when a big goal is scored. Guess you got to take the good with the bad.

That became patently obvious when he leapt in joy after the Game 2 win as if he’d just won the Cup and continued throughout the series. But that’s Bruce.

On another forum I frequent, there’s a terrible Pens fan who delighted so much in the Caps first round exit. Now all he’s saying is “Halak” this and “bad bounces” that. It is rather eerie.

Only if you can correctly guess how many thousands and thousands of dollars it took to build it. Alternatively, you can win a copy of Miracle on blu-ray to watch in a home theater that is way less awesome.

Better “with” than… nevermind… it’s not yet time to go blue.

Real TVs. Three 32" flat screens to be exact.

no easier to digest, but the schadenfreude right now is really quite awesome.

So great.

Off to overtime, yay.

Haha. That’s great work. I love how Richards makes two huge errors on the play. First going for the big hit when you are covering for a D (I don’t care that BSH wants to give him the benefit of the doubt; it’s fair and we’d probably do the same thing for our guy, but you just don’t pinch back in when you are a forward covering for a D. The hit is sexy, but the 0-3 hole is the reason you don’t go for it), and then absolutely refusing to put any hustle into getting back into the play after the hit. He’s at least got to know he’ll be out of position when he throws that hit so he should already be thinking “bust my ass to get back in position” after the hit. He clearly wasn’t, and now PHI is done. If only Kreijci wasn’t done for the year it would probably be my favorite PHI play of the season.